Label: Deram Record (UK), 8828972
Style: Blues Rock, Classic Rock, Hard Rock
Country: Nottingham, England
Time: 63:40
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 369 Mb
Ten Years After actually started out as more of a fast jazz band: Leo Lyons was certainly a jazz bass player, and Alvin's fast'n'furious playing really fitted the jazz pattern much more than standard R'n'B. The track that opens their first album, McLeod's 'I Want To Know', really says it all: magnificent, entertaining, swift, funny guitar lines, a jazz rhythm and Alvin's nasal vocals quickly set the scene for an absolutely self-assured, tight and very raw bunch of covers and 'originals'. And I do mean these quotes: Alvin's contributions to this album are just standard blues melodies set to a different set of, often misogynistic, lyrics. In fact, the only problem the record suffers from is an obvious lack of songwriting skills. Besides that, the production is somewhat lame: the engineers, including future Elton John starmaker Gus Dudgeon, were probably told not to bother very much with this 'experimental' band. So it ends up sounding like a lot of this stuff was recorded with just a hand-held tape recorder, and the production is just as muddy and dizzy as the album cover. All the better: this really gives the effect of a raw, young, happy, energetic and powerful band letting go - unlike the later, much more polished records.
Some of the numbers are just extended bluesfests, and not very exciting at that. 'Spoonful', for instance, was done far more convincingly by Cream, and this particular version suffers horrendously because of muddy, 'undermixed' vocals and because they really overdid the instrumental bit - after all, Alvin Lee is no Eric Clapton when it comes to constructing a slow, calculated blues solo on record. Moreover, the main riff to the song, its usual main attraction, is for some strange reason donated to Mr Churchill who plays it on an organ and thus misses all the heavy bombast that was such a great fun on Cream's version. And the famous cover of Willie Dixon's 'Help Me', the band's most essential stage favourite from the album, does pick up steam near the end, but in the middle it's just a lengthy marathon of rather average soloing. I mean, Alvin does the 'tension build-up' bit rather well, steadily going from modest, self-contained licks to an all-out guitar hell, but ten minutes of tension build-up are a bit too much even for good-natured Blues Tolerators like me.
(full version: starlingdb.org/music/tenyears.htm#After)
01. I Want To Know (02:11)
02. I Can't Keep From Crying, Sometimes (05:24)
03. Adventures of A Young Organ (02:34)
04. Spoonful (06:05)
05. Losing The Dogs (03:03)
06. Feel It For Me (02:40)
07. Love Until I Die (02:06)
08. Don't Want You Woman (02:37)
09. Help Me (09:51)
10. Portable People (bonus track) (02:17)
11. The Sounds (bonus track) (04:29)
12. Rock Your Mama (bonus track) (03:00)
13. Spider In My Web (bonus track) (07:13)
14. Hold Me Tight (bonus track) (02:18)
15. Woodchoppers Ball (bonus track) (07:44)
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